A lever-type connector has a lever provided on one of two connector housings and has cam pins provided on the other connector housing, the cam pins fitting with cam grooves provided on the lever. The two connector housings are brought close to each other and the cam pins are located in the cam grooves. Then, the lever is pivoted and the connector housings are thereby brought even closer to each other, bringing them to a correctly fitted state. In this kind of connector, it is necessary to maintain the lever in an initial position in order to be able to locate the cam pins correctly into the cam grooves.
The means disclosed in Laid Open Publication JP6-275337 is one way of maintaining the lever in the initial position. As shown in FIG. 17 and FIG. 18 of this specification, a lever 1 has elastically bendable stopping projections 2 formed thereon. These stopping projections 2 pass into cam pin grooves 4 of a connector housing 3, thereby preventing movement of the lever 1 in the initial position. Further, as shown in FIG. 19, when the two connector housings 3 and 5 are fitted together, cam pins 6 enter cam grooves 7 and make contact with the stopping projections 2, thereby pushing out the stopping projections 2 from the cam pin grooves 4. As a result, the lever 1 becomes movable and can be pivoted to the closed condition.
In the conventional case, cam pins 6 are made to protrude deeply into the cam grooves 7 so as to serve as members for removing the stopping projections from the cam pin grooves 4. As a result, as shown in FIG. 19, the stopping projections 2 must bend very considerably and the opposing force generated due to the elastic recovery force of the stopping projection 2 is consequently large. This results in a deterioration of operability during the fitting of the connector housing and during the movement of the lever as a consequence of the friction forces.
The present invention has been developed after taking the above problem into account, and aims at limiting the bending of the stopping projections to the minimum necessary extent at the point when the lever becomes pivotable.